D.C. Named Best City for Job Seekers

Unemployed residents of St. Louis may want to consider moving to Washington, D.C. For the second month in a row, the nation’s capital has been ranked the least difficult city for job hunters to find a position by Juju.com, a job search engine that specializes in making Web-based job searches more accessible.

St. Louis, on the other hand, has grabbed the bottom spot on the website’s list for the third consecutive month. In fact, St. Louis has ranked either the worst or second worst city for job seekers (trading off with Detroit) since Juju.com launched its Job Search Difficulty Index for Major U.S. Cities in December 2009.

Juju.com ranks the cities’ job search difficulty by dividing the number of unemployed workers in each state/city as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistic by the number of U.S. jobs in the site’s index. The continuously updated index is compiled from thousands of employer career portals, recruiter sites and job boards all over the Web.

"We started producing the Job Search Difficulty Index because we wanted to put local unemployment numbers in better context for people looking for jobs,” Brendan Cruickshank, vice president of Juju.com, told MainStreet.

According to the website’s June index, there are currently 12.02 individuals per advertised job in St. Louis, versus the 1.28 people per advertisement in Washington, D.C.

San Jose, Calif., which has competed for the top spot with the nation’s capital from the list’s inception, was ranked as the second least difficult city to find a job. There are 1.64 unemployed individuals living in San Jose per advertised job.

Rounding out the top 10 best cities for job searchers were New York City; Baltimore; Hartford, Conn.; Oklahoma City; Boston; Salt Lake City; San Antonio and Denver. At the bottom of list, alongside St. Louis and Detroit, were Miami, Las Vegas and Riverside, Calif., which had 9.73, 9.14 and 8.58 unemployed individuals per job advertisement, respectively. In total, the list includes 50 cities.

The Richmond, Va., job market showed the most improvement over last month, jumping nine spots to 14th place from 23rd. Conversely, San Francisco dropped eight spots, from 17th place to 25th. Job search got you down? Check out MainStreet’s article on the worst jobs in America to see which job listings you should probably avoid.